By Josie Ensor

October 11, 2019 — 8.00am

"Get us money or get us out of here," the message from the desperate Russian Islamic State bride read. Writing in one of their encrypted Telegram groups, the women of al-Hawl detention camp in north-east Syria were trying to mobilise friends and family on the outside to organise a prison break.

Women buy food at al-Hawl camp, Syria.Credit:AAP

Although that attempt came to nothing, fears are growing of a possible escape as the Kurdish fighters, who operate the camp, have been forced to redeploy troops to the border to fight the Turkish invasion of northern Syria.

Al-Hawl is a sprawling settlement holding about 68,000 wives and children of the followers of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

It has variously been described as a "ticking time bomb", a "mini caliphate", and "Camp Bucca II" after the US-run detention centre in Iraq which spawned IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

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Women within the camp have got hold of phones, and more recently even knives and guns, according to reports. The guards, who numbered about 400 before this week's redeployment, admit privately that the women have effectively taken over the day-to-day running of the camp.

The al-Hawl camp in Syria, where the majority of women wear full Islamic dress in order to avoid violence or death by radicalised women. Credit:AAP

They have been attempting to smuggle themselves out for months and the mission took on an added urgency last month after Baghdadi called on them to "rise up".

"We are standing strong for Allah, but Allah help us the situation here is bad," one woman wrote on one of their encrypted Telegram messages.

The precarious security situation in al-Hawl is worsening by the day. The most radical women in the camp, the Russians, the Tunisians and Central Asians, have established a pecking order and they have taken the top positions.

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The Europeans largely keep their heads down, hoping that their governments will come for them.

The camp guards split the 10,000-strong foreign contingent from the 60,000 Syrians and Iraqis after an influx of diehard supporters flooded out from IS's last stronghold of Baghuz in the spring and tensions between them rose.

The women have appointed "morality police" known as Hisba and have even started an unofficial Sharia court, passing down judgment on others deemed to have flouted the jihadists' strict interpretations of Islamic law.

"They punish them first by delivering a written warning, then a knife, then their tents are burned down," one SDF guard said.

A total of 128 tents were set on fire last month alone, according to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A 14-year-old Azerbeijani girl was killed when she was strangled by Hisba members, among them her own grandmother, for not covering her face.

A Chinese Uighur, who had been accused of having an affair with an Iraqi refugee at a neighbouring part of the camp, vanished one day only to be found later in a septic tank with her head caved in from what medics believed to be blows from an iron bar.

Last week, Syrian teenager Abdullah Ahmad was stabbed to death because he had allegedly turned away from the caliphate and had been "collaborating with infidels", referring to the Kurds.

There are also escalating attacks on the Kurdish guards many of whom patrol the camps unarmed.

In the latest incident over the weekend, IS women sliced the throat of a burial worker, leaving him in a critical condition.

After weeks of violence, the Kurdish administration warned that the women had now become "as dangerous as the thousands of IS fighters being held in Syrian Democratic Forces detention centres".

In other, smaller camps, the Kurds have managed to carry out limited deradicalisation work.

In Roj, for example, they have banned the face-covering black niqabs and children have begun attending structured educational classes.

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Authorities have been able to do little at Hawl, which hosts families from more than 55 different countries - many of whom have no shared language with the guards.

There is even some evidence that, rather than being deradicalised, some have become more extreme in their beliefs.

A number of international organisations are looking to set up projects at the camps.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, who has been consulted by some of them, said she had warned that many of the women were now "too far gone".

"The children in the camp are redeemable, but they cannot successfully undergo any CVE (countering violent extremism) programming while surrounded by the most hard-line IS supporters in the world," she said.

"With regards to the women, some are too far gone.

"They live in a parallel universe in which IS is the oppressed one and was attacked for no reason.